CAIRO, Egypt — Art Jameel, an organization that supports heritage, education and the arts, annouced a summer program of workshops that aim to engage the community in the revival of traditional crafts in rural Egypt.

Over four weeks, the program will engage children in Fayoum with workshops focusing on the regions' unique heritage. The program includes workshops that focus on Islamic geometry, brasswork, printing, pottery and ceramics with which Fayoum is so closely associated with, in Egypt.

The summer program, Art Jameel’s first major project in Egypt, outside Cairo, will be led by members of the Atelier Cairo Art Jameel, Art Jameel’s platform for Egyptian entrepreneurship, artisanship and design, which opened in February 2019.

The Atelier includes alumni of the Jameel House of Traditional Arts in Cairo, the center launched by Art Jameel in 2009, which offers a two-year program in craft and design delivered by the Prince’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts, in partnership with Egypt’s Cultural Development Fund.

The village of Tunis is synonymous with one of the most-renowned traditions of Egyptian pottery and is at the center of the revival of the contemporary ceramics in Egypt.

Tunis lies on the banks of Lake Moeris in the Fayoum oasis in Middle Egypt, where works of pottery, with motifs reflected in contemporary designs, have been found dating to the pharaonic period, when the modern city of Fayoum was called Crocodilopolis and later Arsinoë.

The summer program is in partnership with Expertise Consulting House (ECH), an Egyptian organization that provides vocational and entrepreneurship training to underserved communities on behalf of intergovernmental bodies. ECH is delivering a major program in Fayoum under the European Union’s Joint Rural Development Program.

This is the third summer program by Art Jameel in Egypt, through which the organization aims to work with underserved communities and support the preservation of Egyptian heritage.

Previous summer programs have been delivered in two historic districts of medieval Cairo: in Al-Khalifa in 2017, in collaboration with the Megawra; and in Al-Darb Al-Ahmar in 2018, in collaboration with Turath Conservation Group, an initiative centred around the historic Bayt Yakan and co-founded by Ola Said, a Jameel House alumna and tutor.

The initiative is part of Art Jameel’s wider commitment to promoting heritage, education and arts around the Middle East and North Africa, complementing the organisation’s programming in Jeddah and Dubai through the Jameel House of Traditional Arts / Jeddah, Project Space Art Jameel in Jeddah and Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai.

The 2019 Atelier Cairo Art Jameel summer programme in Tunis, Fayoum, will run until Aug. 17 and is free to the local community. — SG